


Maternal Instinct

by SeekingIdlewild



Category: Lioness of Cygnus Five
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 15:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7939705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeekingIdlewild/pseuds/SeekingIdlewild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new colony struggling to survive on a little-explored planet in a hostile universe could expect to suffer losses. She knew that. And with all they had endured so far, it was amazing that their little graveyard wasn’t any fuller. But every death felt like a personal failure, and it was worse each time, because she was getting to know these people and their hopes and dreams and struggles and fears. She was already starting to feel overwhelmed, and her self-appointed job on this wild world had only just begun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maternal Instinct

**Author's Note:**

> A little fic inspired by Alex Beecroft's latest book, _Lioness of Cygnus Five_.

Bryant looked almost childlike on hands and knees, bathed in soft light from above and below. The glowing alien symbols swirling and reforming in the transparent floor were reflected in his dark eyes, and the overhead lights picked out copper highlights in his mass of gravity-defying curls. He looked vulnerable like this, until you saw his expression. The pleasure and confidence, the reverence and calculation, the workings of a brilliant mind that could rejoice in a thing’s beauty even as he exploited it for all it was worth. It was all there on his freckled face, shades of innocence and genius and devious tendencies all wrapped up into one enigmatic but endlessly appealing package. And he was right here, right where she knew he would be, hale and beautiful and absorbed in his tech, apparently in his own little world, but so much more in tune with everything around him than most people would suspect. The familiarity of the little scene broke through the suffocating pressure on Aurora’s chest, and she could suddenly breathe again.

Her first deep inhale sounded suspiciously like a sob.

Bryant glanced up. He’d known she was standing there, of course. Maybe he’d been posing for her, letting her watch him crawl about on the floor. He knew he was worth looking at - knew she liked to look. But at sight of her face, he scrambled to his feet. “What is it? What happened?”

She must be as transparent as the floor right now, but that was okay. She didn’t have to pretend to be impervious to stress and loss with him. He’d seen her at her weakest, and he’d never despised her for it.

“Kiefer and Rojas are dead.”

He was advancing toward her, but he paused mid-stride, his open, concerned expression undergoing a series of subtle alterations. The two names obviously meant nothing to him, but he looked like he was prepared to regret their tragic end for her sake. It was sweet, and she managed a small, tired smile in response. “I don’t guess you know them. They were helping Jakes hunt and scavenge for provisions.”

“How did they die?” he asked.

“A plant killed them.”

His brows went up at that. “Did they eat it?” He walked forward again, slower this time, perhaps somewhat less interested in comforting her now that he apparently thought the two men had died of stupidity. Everyone in their little community ought to know better than to eat any alien flora or fauna before it had been thoroughly analyzed.

“No,” she said, “Jakes said it attacked them. It had long vine-like appendages covered in thorns, and after Keifer and Rojas got scratched by it, they both went into convulsions, foamed at the mouth, and died on the spot.”

Bryant’s eyes widened, and he looked slightly sickened even at this mild description of their deaths. It was just as well that he hadn’t actually seen the bodies. They had not been pretty. She was still disturbed by the thought of Rojas’s frozen, tortured grimace, his purple face and his swollen tongue protruding from frothy lips. Just a day earlier, he had been beaming like a star as he told her all about his little daughter, Camila, and his wife, Cristina. He was planning to bring them to Cygnus 5 so they could settle down together and be a family again. His eyes had been alive with delight at the thought.

A new colony struggling to survive on a little-explored planet in a hostile universe could expect to suffer losses. She knew that. And with all they had endured so far, it was amazing that their little graveyard wasn’t any fuller. But every death felt like a personal failure, and it was worse each time, because she was getting to know these people and their hopes and dreams and struggles and fears. She was already starting to feel overwhelmed, and her self-appointed job on this wild world had only just begun.

A pair of slender arms slipped around her waist, and a warm body pressed up against hers, chasing away some of the chill of death that seemed to have followed her into the room. She leaned into Bryant’s embrace, sighing with relief at the feel of his heartbeat close to hers.

“This is really tearing you up, isn’t it?” he murmured.

“What do you think?” she replied, nuzzling her face into his soft cloud of hair. Even his familiar scent was a comfort.

“I think you haven’t slept in more than 24 hours and you’re exhausted. You should go to bed.”

Good advice. Bryant could usually be counted on to prescribe bedrest for most ills that couldn’t be cured with bots (and even many that could), but she knew she would do nothing but toss and turn if she tried to go to sleep now. Because she wasn’t just dejected and grieved at the moment. She was angry. Angry that some stupid _plant_ had taken two of her people from her. Angry at her own lack of omniscience, the gaps in her careful network of control that grit and good intentions just couldn’t quite fill.

Suddenly restless, she broke out of the circle of Bryant’s arms. “I’m going for a walk,” she decided.

“A walk? It’s night,” Byant pointed out.

Aurora didn’t see what that had to do with much of anything. “There’s plenty of light. I need... I just need to move.”

He frowned at her for a long moment, reading her eyes with the same attention and comprehension that he’d been reading the alien text in the floor when she’d walked in. Then he shrugged. “Okay.”

He walked away to retrieve the thick, oversized jacket that he’d left meticulously folded in one corner of the room in the absence of a coat rack or any human-style furnishing over which to drape it. The jacket was borrowed from one of the deceased former convicts. It dwarfed him comically, but winter was just around the corner and there were hints of frost in the air, especially after dark.

“I don’t remember inviting you,” Aurora said, but she was touched that he was so ready to leave whatever he’d been working on to brave the cold with her.

He gave her an unimpressed look as he zipped up the jacket. “Come on. Let’s go investigate this fucking plant.”

“I didn’t say--”

“I _know_ you, Aurora,” he cut in. “Something killed your men, and you’re going to go decide whether it has to die.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong. “And what are _you_ going to do? Help?”

“What I always do. Keep my distance and offer useful advice. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

The plant was exactly where Jakes had indicated, positioned in the middle of an open meadow covered in creeping ivy-like vegetation and the odd clump of yellow ferns. What Jakes hadn’t made clear, however, was just how _large_ the plant was. It was more like a small tree, taller than her by several feet, and it had numerous branching arms covered in wide green leaves and smaller, trailing tendrils. She couldn’t see the thorns from this distance, but she knew they must be there on those whip-like strands. At the end of each large branch was a rounded, spiky fruit that put her in mind of a pineapple. The light breeze carried the scent of something sweet and tart and delicious from the plant’s general direction, and she understood why Kiefer and Rojas had gone for it. Even knowing how deadly this plant could be, the smell still made her mouth water.

“Huh,” was Bryant’s only comment. He stood at her side, shivering slightly even in his warm jacket.

“Yeah,” Aurora agreed. It looked like a plant. A large plant, but a plant. Definitely not the overgrown venus flytrap type of monstrosity that she had been picturing.

Bryant took a few cautious steps forward, ignoring a growl of warning from her. When nothing happened, he took a few more steps. The plant sort of… _shuddered_ , like it was heaving a large sigh of annoyance at being disturbed. Then the vine-like tendrils began to move, curling up to lick at the air. _Now_ it looked threatening.

To Aurora’s surprise and alarm, Bryant took _another_ step forward.

“What the hell are you doing?” she snapped, striding forward and reaching out to grab his collar so she could drag him back to safety. “What happened to keeping your distance?”

“I’m still out of range,” he said, waving her off. “But _look_! There, behind the leaves at the bottom. You can just barely see them peeking out.”

Aurora kept her grip on the collar of his jacket, but she followed the direction of his pointing finger with her eyes until she spotted them. At the base of the larger plant were at least a dozen much smaller versions, each consisting of a little trunk crowned with one of the pineapple-like fruits, only in miniature, and a few stumpy branches tipped with tiny leaves. On them, the fruit looked like heads and their branches looked like arms, and they seemed to be peering over the edge of their mother’s protective foliage for a sight of the two menacing humans.

“She has plant babies,” Bryant said, and there was a note of wonder in his voice that Aurora had never expected to hear in connection with anything non-technological. In general, he seemed to disapprove of nature on principle. “They’re cute.”

They _were_ cute, much more friendly-looking and anthropomorphic than their deadly mother. They even seemed to be moving about as if on little legs. Were they even rooted in the ground? Maybe not. It wouldn’t make sense to have so many little seedlings growing up close to their parent. There wouldn’t be enough resources in that one area to support them all, and the roots of the elder plant would choke out those of its offspring. So would the little sprouts grow to a certain point and then leave the nest, like animals? It was a rather fascinating thought. In the meantime, though, those mini plants probably tasted very good, and they didn’t seem to have the same defense mechanisms as their mother.

“She’s protecting them,” Aurora murmured. “Kiefer and Rojas got too close to her children, so she killed them.”

Bryant shot her a thoughtful look. “I guess you can understand that.”

She could. She really could. It was tragic and sickening to have lost two good people in such a senseless way, but having seen these funny little seedlings for herself, her sympathy was now evenly split between the human victims and their killer.

The universe was dangerous place for mothers and their young. One had to be vicious to protect one’s own.

“Okay,” Aurora said. Then she let out a deep breath and said again, “Okay.”

“Time to go home?” Bryant asked.

She nodded. She had seen what she’d come to see.

Bryant found her hand and gave it a squeeze. They walked off together under the bright arch of Cygnus 5’s spectacular rings, leaving the plant and her offspring in peace.


End file.
